Letter Data System

I don’t know about you, but the beginning of the school year for me is always chaotic! I am trying to collect paperwork, make sure all my kids eat, send them home at dismissal correctly, communicate with parents, OH and get to know my students both personally and academically! Our plates are definitely full, so I wanted to create an easy and organized data collecting system that would help me know where they were with their letters and letter sounds right off the bat.

This Letter Data System is one of my biggest “Labor of Loves” that I have worked on. It allows me to immediately start testing students at the beginning of the year, have them practice their letters, and involve parents right away by using this system.

The first component of this product is Progress Monitoring. The dates on this form are editable so you can test students as often as you need. My goal is to always test weekly at first- so I can tell who is really growing and who needs more remediation. This tool is especially great for RTI kids when you need to pull data for them. I keep all of my kid’s assessments in my data binder for quick reference when we are working in small groups.

There is the option to test the letters in ABC order, or with the letters OUT of order! At my school, we used Recipe for Reading and Orton strategies, so this is the order we used:

As a way for students to keep track of the letters they know and don’t know, we use their Ring of Letters. I try to keep 2-3 letters they DON’T know on the ring for practice. They slowly build up the amount of cards they have to go over as they learn their letters. The cover pages for these Rings are editable so you can add your kid’s names.

My FAVORITE part about this system is the Parent Note. This is a quick way to let parents know about their child’s progress. (This is also available with the letters out of order.)

Students love tracking their own data with these Data Sheets that they can color in or use stickers on! There are several options to track Letter Recognition or Letter Sounds.

The last part of the system is the set of Data Walls. There are also several options for this one, so you can choose to display Letter Recognition or Letter Sounds with Ice Cream scoops or using clothespins on posters.

If you would like a sample of my work, I have created a set of the Flash Cards from this system as a FREEBIE for my TpT Store! Click the picture to check it out.

I hope this post gave you some ideas for how to teach and track letters in your classroom!